


Just Enough Self-Loathing

by thundercaya



Series: Exterminator!Steve (auxiliary) [4]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dot Day, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercaya/pseuds/thundercaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's never fun to be Steve Carlsberg. This is especially true on Dot Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Enough Self-Loathing

Steve Carlsberg does his very best not to leave his house on Dot Day.

His daughter Stella, bless her, knows, and doesn't ask him to take her anywhere. She just stays quietly in her room, practicing her dancing, or playing video games, or staging elaborate death matches with her Polly Pockets and her Bratz dolls. If anyone rings the bell she answers the door, all frizzy red hair and a smile that banishes their disappointment at not being able to place a blue dot on Steve Carlsberg.

"Nice kid," they say to each other as they place the dots on Steve's front door or his mailbox or his Corolla instead. "Hard to believe she came from him."

"She favors her mother, really," they go on, putting red dots on Steve's work truck--after all, he _had_ taken care of their invisible tarantula problem just last week, even though they hadn't mentioned over the phone that the tarantulas were invisible. "Always has. Such a pretty thing."

It's not that Steve doesn't _know_ that everyone hates him--how could he not?--and it's not that he doesn't have just enough self-loathing to feel like he deserves it, but between the public mistreatment, the insults spat out over the radio, and the arbitrary taxes he and he alone is required to pay, he really doesn't need _another_ reminder, much less a visible one that he isn't allowed to remove until it comes off on its own. One that the people in town are so gleeful to give him.

Steve tries to spend his Dot Days productively: going over his inventory, re-ordering chemicals, cleaning his equipment, or feverishly writing up his pamphlets. If he's up to it. If he isn't, he spends the day dragging himself--sometimes literally--back and forth between his bed and his sofa as if hoping the movement will awaken some motivation in him to do something--anything--else. It typically doesn't, and he spends long moments face-down on either soft surface--or the floor if he's feeling drained enough to not complete the trip. While there, he thinks about packing his and Stella's things into his now blue-specked car and driving out of town. Leaving these people who hate him to the death they so obviously crave, judging by their aversion to him and his warnings and their attraction to all things terrible and dangerous. Stella might hate him for a while, for taking her out of the life she'd always known, but she'd make adjustments and she'd come around. If they could leave. Which they couldn't. So the point is moot. That makes it worse.

Stella generally leaves him alone on the better Dot Days, not wanting to risk spoiling his neutral-if-not-good disposition. It's pathetic, when Steve thinks about it, needing his little girl to tiptoe around his moods, but damn if he doesn't love her for doing it. On the days when his gloom couldn't possibly be deepened by her participation in the ritual responsible for it, she takes the sheet of red dots and places one after another on him until he finally looks at her. It works out, really, because the worse Steve feels, the longer it takes him, and the more red dots he ends up with. "Check it out, Daddy," she says, smile even broader than the one she gives the visitors at the door. "You're the most popular person here."

Depending on just how down he is, he either forces a smile or lets a real one spread naturally on his face. Either way he puts his arms around her and hugs her close for some amount of time. After releasing her he takes the sheet of remaining red dots from her. "That's because no one asked me," he says before returning the gesture.


End file.
